Chapter 291 - Escaping the Death Trap (Patreon)

How did this happen?! This is a nightmare!

Kefira frantically gathered her Mana, expertly weaving it as quickly as she could while visualizing the effect she wanted in intricate detail. Having practiced her visualization for her jumps repeatedly over the years allowed her to use her skill to empower her space blades.

One would think that blades made with an edge at the literal dimensional scale would easily be able to slice through anything. That would be true if it didn’t have any Mana in it, but even mundane objects had their own Mana density, and that created a passive resistance to other Magics affecting it.

Tier 5 objects were still quite hard for her to easily slice through. That didn’t mean she couldn’t, it just meant it required actual effort and concentration, plus more Mana.

The meatball creature she was focusing her attacks on at the moment was clearly above Tier 5. The only reason she was able to scratch it at all was because the Dragon - another Dragon! - had depleted much of its resistance with its own attacks.

At the start of the battle, they could clearly see an outline of a Mana Shield on the creature. Active resistance, as in Skills even if they were technically passive, added a whole other layer of difficulty to overcoming the barrier with Magic. If the Dragon wasn’t there mangling the enemy, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to damage the tentacle monster at all, even with 100% of her Mana reserves.

As it was, she only had to fight through the natural defense of its Vitality, which, with how little she was scraping the thing every time a Dimensional Blade struck it, was massive.

I shouldn’t be wasting my time on attacking this thing! Kefira screamed internally. But something tells me that as soon as I start creating a dimensional portal out of here, that thing will ignore the Dragon and pounce on me right away. And let’s face it, that thing could wiggle out of the grasp of anything. I bet it could slide through the cracks of a closed door if it wanted to.

Her instincts told her she couldn’t focus on getting her Party out of here with that thing so close. Until it was dead, she would add what little she could to shaving its Health down in an attempt to kill it as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t all bad news, though. The Dragon was actually doing some serious damage to the thing. It must be a Tier 6 hidden boss, she speculated. It’s common for Dungeons to have bosses Tiers above the level of the Dungeon itself. It must be pretty high Leveled within Tier 6, too, with the properties of a Dragon on top of it. Everyone knows Dragons are inherently at the top of the food chain when it comes to beasts and monsters.

For now that was a good thing. She didn’t want to think about what could have happened if they had found the hidden boss and decided to try and kill it themselves. Based on how it was performing against the meat blob, it wouldn’t have gone well for them. But if she knew Reivyn, and she liked to think she did, he would definitely be coming back.

If we survive this…

She tried to shake the negative thoughts out of her mind. Things weren’t looking as horrible as she first thought.

Then she heard Teilon whisper something to Reivyn. She glanced at the pair and followed their line of sight. She saw the creeping shadow well off in the distance. She didn’t have as high a Perception Stat as either of them, nor did she have any Skills to aid her in viewing things at a distance, but from the blood further draining from their faces, she could put two and two together.

How is that possible?! She frantically thought, redoubling her efforts with her Magic. They were on a hard deadline, now. How many of those things are there?! At least this one seems to be whittling down at a noticeable rate.

Then another tragedy struck. A shriek from further up the mountain, also well outside the bounds of the Dungeon, pulled everyone’s attention away from the fight momentarily. Kefira felt despair as another meat monster appeared and combined with the first one, turning into a single entity.

"…"

Eww, that was gross…

Kefira once more shook her head and began attacking the horror. The second one combining with the first reestablished the Mana Shield, though, so her first several Dimensional Blades simply bounced off the opposing Mana.

She noticed with flickering interest that Ameliyn’s Celestial-Attuned Magic actually penetrated the Mana Shield and did some damage. It wasn’t that surprising, though. Ameliyn was an entire Tier above Kefira and years more practice with her Magic. Every little bit helped.

Soon the Dragon tore through the renewed Mana Shield allowing Kefira to once more add her little nicks and scrapes to the damage. As she was concentrating on her own Magics, she felt a spike in Mana next to her.

At first she didn’t pay it any attention, currently assuming it was something Reivyn was doing, but the spike wasn’t just a spike. It kept growing, and growing, and growing. She looked over at her beloved with mounting horror. She knew Reivyn had a powerful body and could withstand a whole lot of Mana coursing through it, but he also had an unreasonable amount of Mana at his beck and call.

“What are you doing?” Kefira asked, a note of concern in her voice.

Reivyn ignored her. Well, more like he can’t hear me, he’s so concentrated on what he’s doing, Kefira realized.

“Hey!” Kefira reached over and shook Reivyn’s shoulder. He didn’t notice.

Soon cracks began spreading across Reivyn’s body. Blinding light shone out from within instead of blood, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t bleeding. Blood was pouring from his face.

“Ameliyn!” Kefira screamed.

Ameliyn stopped launching Spells at the massive monster in the sky and looked over at Kefira and Reivyn. She immediately dropped everything and ran over to them, placing her hands on either side of Reivyn’s face. She had no time to worry about the blood covering her hands as she injected as much Healing Magics as she could into his body.

Kefira could tell it was working, but only because it stopped adding more injuries to Reivyn’s body. The rate his body was being destroyed was matched by the Healing Magic.

A swirling tempest of Mana formed in front of Reivyn’s body. Even completely ignoring everything that was happening around him, his subconscious mind still had enough sense to form it away from his fiance and mother.

The Mana sapped out of his body quickly, joined by additional Tier 1 Elemental Mana from the Ambient Mana. It quickly formed into a golden, shining spear. Kefira could feel the wrath contained in the ethereal weapon as it floated in place for a fraction of a second.

Then it was gone.

In its place was a trail of light that extended into the distance, completely piercing straight through the dimensional barrier of the Dungeon and continuing on who knows where. It looked like one of his Beam Spells, but Kefira knew it wasn’t. A loud boom sounded as the sound barrier was surpassed.

Kefira, Ameliyn, and the others looked to the monster and Dragon and saw that the trail of light passed right through where their center masses would have been. Instead, most of their bodies had simply disappeared.

They stood in stunned silence as the remains of both of them disintegrated and flaked away into the wind.

Kefira didn’t have time to worry about that, though. The evil creature was dead, and it was time for her to build her dimensional tunnel to escape from this place. She took a quick glance into the distance at the creeping shadow.

It doesn’t seem to have moved all that far, so it looks like I have maybe an hour or two to make this tunnel and get us out of here, Kefira observed. That should be plenty of time to make multiple trips to throw them off of our trail.

Hopefully, once we leave the Dungeon, it shuts down or does whatever Dungeons do whenever nobody is actively delving them and that helps throw their scent off.

She started gathering her Mana once more. She had a lot of practice with jumps, but she’d only pierced through the veil like this a couple of times, and she only had the one experience fleeing through the veil.

This time she wasn’t just puncturing a hole in the veil with the hope that they were deposited somewhere else, because that would most likely just lead them to the nearby area where the Dungeon was located, and they needed to get away.

Instead she was going to combine the concepts of jumping, piercing the veil, and repairing the veil like she had done in that spider crater in order to construct an actual tunnel like the Portals in the capital cities. She didn’t know if she could do it at Tier 4, comparing what she was trying to do with the capital teleportation circles, but she wasn’t trying to create something permanent with multiple destinations from a single point.

I should be able to make a short, temporary tunnel we can flee across with the intention that it collapses in on itself once it’s done, Kefira hyped herself up. And I won’t need to stabilize it for an hour at a time, either. Just a few minutes, and then I can just do it again.

I can do this!

Something caught her eye once again before she truly got started, though. She looked off into the distance, at the edge of the horizon. A giant, black mass was slowly ascending into the air countless miles away. It had wriggling tendrils sticking up out of its head like grotesque hair. As it rose higher and higher, a pair of giant eyes snapped open and looked right at the Party.

“What is That?!” Teilon shouted. “Come on! You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Now’s not the time to panic,” Refix said, a calming tone to his voice. “Kefira, continue with what you’re doing. Maybe we’ll still get out of this.”

“If it can see us across the threshold of the dimensional barriers, what’s to stop it from just looking at what I’m doing?” Kefira asked, though she didn’t stop gathering her Mana.

“We won’t know until we try.”

Kefira nodded her head and continued weaving her construct, imbuing it with as much of her intention as she could.

She pulled threads of Mana from her core and twined them together until they were as thick as rope. She placed the knots along the path like she had done hundreds of times, slightly altering their position and intricacy based on her intuition and understanding of the Affinity. She painted a picture in her mind of the time she pierced the veil, but she coupled it with the repairs she had made on the hole in reality.

She was going to slice through reality, but not all the way through to outside the realm, and then gather up the strands of the frayed veil and use that as her building block, interspersed with her Mana, to build the tunnel they would escape through.

She worked on the construct for long minutes, sweat trickling down her forehead. She couldn’t waste the time to wipe the sweat away and simply let it sting her eyes as it dripped down.

“Wait…” Refix’s voice barely registered in Kefira’s consciousness, but she subconsciously looked to the older man as she continued her project. “Something’s happening.”

She followed his gaze back to the monstrosity peeking over the horizon. By now it had risen high enough that Kefira could see that this time it wasn’t just a meatball. It was a true giant. A humanoid figure with its head and shoulders above the horizon and still rising.

That wasn’t what drew Refix’s attention, though. Next to the grotesque head, a black dot appeared in the sky. As Kefira watched, it expanded at a tremendous pace, considering the distances between them, and a huge hole appeared next to the monster.

Visible strands of air and Mana were sucked into the hole like a vacuum. The monstrosity opened its mouth and apparently screamed in either anger or frustration, but it was too far away for the sound to carry.

It wasn’t just the giant, either. The little tentacle monsters making up the creeping shadow were also halted in their tracks. A tense few seconds passed as the hole continued to expand. The giant and all its little critters were suddenly, violently yanked toward the hole and sucked right through it.

It didn’t pay any attention to the obvious vast distances between them. It acted as if the hole had been created equally as distant between the giant and the tentacle monsters. A couple of shadows passed over their heads. They moved too quickly to get a good glimpse at them, but with context, Kefira realized that there had been several more of those monsters much closer, further up the mountain side.

Almost as fast as it began, it was over. The last of the creeping monsters was sucked through the giant crack in the sky, and then it closed as if nothing had happened.

Kefira still maintained her hold on the Mana, but she and everyone else in the Party shared an uneasy look with each other. They just stood in silence for a couple of minutes, waiting for the next terrible, unexpected thing to happen.

When nothing did after a moment, Refix visibly relaxed and expelled a held breath.

“Well, it seems like the emergency is over,” he said. “That being said, don’t disperse your Mana, Kefira. Let’s go ahead and use the method of escape you came up with to get out of here. Without those things being able to see us, maybe we’ll further throw them off our tracks.”

“Alright,” Kefira nodded her head.

Now that there was no time limit or monstrosity literally glaring down on her, Kefira felt much more relaxed and able to take her time. She continued making her weave as the others waited in silence.

Usually there would be some banter between them, but nobody had much to say at this exact moment. Kefira was sure that once they were all safe, though, there would be no other topic of conversation for some time.

Ameliyn finished administering aid to Reivyn and gently held him in her lap, absent-mindedly brushing his hair with a concerned, motherly look on her face. The cracks on his body had healed, but they had left scars on his body. Normally magical Healing wouldn’t leave such scarring, but whatever Reivyn had done had caused some serious problems with his body. They would have to wait until he regained consciousness to find out exactly what, though.

Everyone stayed still and silent like that for half an hour as Kefira finished her Mana construct. She looked up, and everyone perked up at the movement with questioning looks in their gaze. Kefira nodded her head. Ameliyn handed Reivyn to Refix to carry, and everyone shuffled to stand behind Kefira.

She Cast her Spell.

Her Mana jabbed forward and pierced the veil. Her Mana then expanded outward, gathering up the veil that had come loose in the process. Her Mana weaved itself through the strands of the veil and created a short tunnel. It was only fifty or so yards long, but when dealing with Space Mana, that could be any equivalent distance in the real world.

It only took a fraction of her concentration and Mana to keep the tunnel stable as she took a tentative step forward. The ground was solid like the earth, and everything held in place properly. She glanced back at the others.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I’m done with this Dungeon. I’m done with this Region. I’m ready to go home after we’ve rested a bit at the outpost and confirmed we won’t have tentacle monsters chasing us to the ends of the Realm.”

“Sounds good to me,” Refix agreed.

The others nodded in assent as well. Everybody was ready to leave this death trap behind.

Kefira turned around and fully stepped into the Dungeon, the others following hot on her heels.